


breathing space

by iphigenias



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Episode Tag: The Breaking Point, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks at Gene in the moonlight, really <em>looks</em> at him, and feels a strange, unknowable sensation swell inside his ribcage, pressing against his heart and his lungs and making it hard to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathing space

**Author's Note:**

> Based upon the characters from the HBO show, and not the real men. No disrespect is intended.

It’s past midnight by the time Babe is relieved of sentry duty. He relinquishes the frontline foxhole to Perconte and slinks back into the shadows of the Bastogne woods, towards his own foxhole where he’s anticipating a good couple hours of fitful sleep, at most. Instead, what he finds is Gene Roe, leaning against the rough bark of a snow-covered pine tree, cigarette between his lips and looking out into the darkness like he’s searching for something.

“Gene,” Babe hisses through the shadows, stumbling over to the pinprick of light that marks the burning end of the medic’s Lucky Strike. “The hell you think you’re doing out in the open, huh? Christ.” Babe gets a hold of Gene’s sleeve and tugs the other man towards his foxhole, where they both drop inside and slip off their helmets. “What the hell, Gene?” Babe asks, incredulous, just staring at the man who only moments ago had been a sitting duck for enemy artillery fire. “You could’ve been hit! We can’t afford to lose you.” _I can’t afford to lose you_.

Gene just takes a long, slow drag on his cigarette and raises his eyes towards the sky. “I found Skip,” he says to the stars, blowing out a cloud of grey smoke from between pursed lips. “What’s left of him, anyway.”

Babe stares. Gene’s eyes are hooded with shadow, but there’s something in them that makes Babe’s stomach turn. “What?”

“Lip asked me to look for ‘em, to find as much as I could to send home to their folks.” He stubs out the cigarette on the heel of his boot and lowers his gaze to Babe’s. “I thought I’d seen it all, you know. I’ve reset bones, stitched up head wounds, held a dyin’ man’s heart in my palm.” Gene’s hand clenches instinctively, almost as if it’s remembering what he’s describing. “There was a lot o’ blood that day, and I thought, _this is it. There ain’t nothin’ worse than this_.” He lets out a soft, derisive snort, and Babe’s own heart rises to the base of his throat. He feels like he can’t breathe. In the back of his mind he pictures Julian, writhing in the snow, blood bubbling like boiling water from the gash in his neck. Babe had felt so lost that day, so broken; he’d promised the kid he’d go back for him, and he never did.

Babe will live with that for the rest of his life, and from the looks of him now, Gene feels the same. He must have plenty of his own ghosts to haunt him.

“You know what they teach us medics at Toccoa?” Gene asks, breaking the heavy silence. Babe shakes his head. “They tell you to stay away from the men. Don’t get too close to ‘em. Because the time’ll come that you’ll watch ‘em die, and when it happens you have to leave ‘em there. Move on to the next man.” Gene swallows, hard, and stares at his hands, as if seeing blood that isn’t there. “There ain’t no time to grieve. Ain’t no time to think about--about anythin’. _It’ll be easier_ , they said to us, _if the man bleeding out in front o’ you is just a man. Not a friend, not a brother--just another soldier_.” Gene sighs and meets Babe’s eyes again. “They told us it’d be better that way.”

“That’s why you always sit by yourself,” Babe realises, feeling the harsh Bastogne wind whip his cheeks but not feeling the usual chill that comes with it. “But Spina, he--”

“He knows the rules, and he knows what’ll happen if he breaks them. S’not up to me to tell him what’s right and what’s wrong.” Somewhere, in the distance, an owl hoots. It’s a soft, melancholy sort of sound that strikes Babe right down to the very bones. He looks at Gene in the moonlight, really _looks_ at him, and feels a strange, unknowable sensation swell inside his ribcage, pressing against his heart and his lungs and making it hard to breathe. Babe looks at Gene in the moonlight, all pale skin and sharp angles, and feels like if the world ended in this moment, if a shell came hurtling silently from the darkness and hit their foxhole like the one that hit Skip and Penkala yesterday, then Babe would be at peace. Not happy, because dying is never happy, but at least he’d no longer be at war--and at least he’d be with Gene.

Babe feels all this and more in the space of a heartbeat. He wonders if Gene feels the same.

“So what now?” Babe asks, pinned down by Gene’s gentle gaze. “You said you’re not meant to get close to anyone, but.” Babe leaves the sentence hanging; leaves an opening for Gene to fill in the gap and reassure him that he’s not alone in what he’s feeling.

Gene holds Babe’s gaze unsmilingly. “But you’re not just anyone,” he finishes in that lilting Cajun accent, so smooth and soft compared to Babe’s own South Philly vocal chords. “Don’t you dare die on me, Heffron, you hear? Don’t know what I’d do with myself if you did.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Babe says into the space between them, the space that’s so vast and so claustrophobic at the same time. He doesn’t promise Gene that he’ll be okay; he’s made promises like that before, and he knows how it feels to not keep them; how it feels to have a little part of your soul torn out, nice and neat like a surgical incision. Babe doesn’t promise Gene, but he promises himself to at least try, and for now, in this damp and dark foxhole in Bastogne, where the cold seems to settle under his skin and the blood never quite washes off, it’s enough. ****


End file.
